WinCC Runtime Licence Expired

The saga of the Stuxnet worm continues to unravel and evolve. Now they're saying it's the most advanced worm in the world of worms. Most likely this means programmers and geeks should be in awe.

Stuxnet is today believed to have had a specific target - specific in that it wanted to attack a single computer constellation in a specific geophysical location. Wow. All that worming for a single attack?

But Stuxnet is built to attack systems that have customised programmable logic controllers with unique code on each. Someone somewhere was an insider.

And the people studying Stuxnet can't see what the worm is supposed to do once it finds its way home - precisely for the above reason.

The growing consensus today is that Stuxnet is the product of an extremely sophisticated team of programmers - the kind of thing the NSA or Mossad might dream up.

One of the reasons it's revered is it uses four zero day exploits - and for those unfamiliar with the term: a zero day exploit is a way to hack a system that the vendors aren't aware of. One zero day exploit can be a sensation - but four? All at once? Attacking the same platform?

Not that it's mentioned very often but think a bit - what platform can reasonably be expected to be so hopeless that four such exploits can be found all at once?

You guessed it.

The concerned netizen might first heave a sigh of relief that the above computer screen from somewhere in Iran (the presumed target of Stuxnet) might mean the Iranian nuclear threat is mostly a joke.

The intelligent and concerned netizen might instead realise that such a wobbly system can just as easily lead to an accident and terrible consequences for people everywhere.

The casual bystander might think Iranians are idiots because they're using Windows in mission critical systems.

The better read casual bystander might have read that these SCADA systems, manufactured by Siemens, are written specifically for Windows (and only Windows) and that they are protected by a password that's 'baked in' and cannot be changed.

The mild-mannered non-Windows user might be wondering when the woes of Windows are no longer the concern of the planet and its netizens at large.